About us

Sally Haden and her brother Donald began looking into their family’s industrial past in 2005, starting with a bundle of old photographs which had been discovered under the floor of the family’s factory in Birmingham many years earlier. These showed bicycle component designs going back into the Victorian period, as well as motorcycle manufacturing until the 1930s, and later products for the bicycle and car industries.

They visited the Black Country Museum, investigated family history and began putting a book together. It was not long before some exciting details began to emerge about a Scottish ancestor who had taught glassmaking in Japan in the 1880s, and Sally took up the subject with the help of a Japanese glass historian. She has now written several articles and papers for the UK’s Glass Association and visited Japan in 2015 to give a lecture and meet Japanese glass manufacturers.